CA BOCES Success Stories
Stories of Success from School Districts and CA BOCES Instructional Support Services
 Duncan Kirkwood shares his perspective on resilience during Summer TECCC Camp 2024. The CA BOCES Summer TECCC Camp received a makeover this year, as it transitioned from the traditional “Tech Camp” to “TECCC Camp”, which stands for “Transforming Education Via Creation, Challenge and Choice”. This three-day professional learning event was rebranded as such to welcome educators of all disciplines and grade-levels, regardless of technological ability. As educators, we know that forming relationships with students and helping them to build resilience are key to having a successful classroom experience. Dr. Duncan Kirkwood, author of Rerouting: Resilience Tools and Tactics, captivated the participants on the first two days of the event with his highly motivational message about building resilience and helping students to cultivate “grit”. In addition to delivering the keynote address, Kirkwood also met with smaller grade-band groups to discuss resilience for a more specified audience. His sessions inspired and delighted the attendees, around 40, each day. When not with Kirkwood, participants attended sessions that focused on creation, challenge and choice. Topics for sessions this year included Microsoft Office Learning Accelerators, Best Apps to Integrate Social-Emotional Learning, Integrating Arts into Education, Distance Learning Highlights, an introduction to Click View and Streamable Learning, and more. Participants also engaged in round table discussions with their grade-band groups, which included collaborative work time. There were several teachers from the region who presented as well; participants were able to choose which sessions they attended so they could create a learning experience that was most meaningful to them. Heather Francisco, STEAM Instructional Coach from Wellsville, presented on Canva, a tech tool that has revolutionized presentations, poster creation, video creation, and more. Genessee Valley teachers Ashley Auman and Abby Marsh presented on “Creative Technologies", including using stop-motion animation and robotics. Donna Slawson, also from Genessee Valley, presented on how to turn Microsoft Teams into a classroom hub. These regional presenters had an incredible impact on the participants, and we are always looking for other amazing educators who are willing to present. If you would like to present next year, please fill out this form and we will contact you when we are accepting Request for Proposals (RFPs) for TECCC Camp 2025.
If you were unable to attend, but you are interested in viewing some of the resources from TECCC Camp, visit our Wakelet, which contains a variety of presentations, websites, and other resources. If you have any questions or would like further information about any of those topics, please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] so I can connect you with the staff specialist who can best meet your needs. Summer TECCC Camp will return next summer on August 5, 2025 – August 7, 2025. Stay tuned throughout the year; look for announcements about the Keynote speakers and other exciting topics that will be featured at next summer’s event. We hope to see you there! By: Brooke Neamon, Coordinator for Curriculum and Professional Development  Virtual Field Trips (VFTs) are an excellent resource that utilize technology to immerse students in experiences that are normally inaccessible without leaving the classroom. In addition, VFTs are a powerful tool that provide enhanced accessibility and inclusivity, real-world applications, cultural awareness, and global perspectives. CA BOCES Distance Learning uses two services to provide these opportunities to students in participating school districts throughout the region.
The Center for Interactive Learning & Collaboration (cilc.org) has been utilized for many years and features hundreds of partners from around the world. These partners include renowned museums, zoos, science centers, and other experts around the world. Connections through the CILC are live and synchronous, meaning you and your students can interact with the presenter personally and ask questions. In addition, these connections can be scheduled for a time that works for both your schedule and the vendors. Once you fill out this registration form, we will reach out in order to schedule the desired VFT. As a bonus, each participating district receives 1 free VFT through the CILC for the 2024-25 school year. If you’ve never experienced a VFT before, now is a great time to try it out! New for the 2024-25 school year are VFTs through Streamable Learning. This service is included in the base cost for the Distance Learning CoSer so incurs no additional cost. Connections through this vendor can be live or pre-recorded, giving the teacher more opportunities that can be utilized today if needed. Streamable Learning also has 100’s of vendors, many the same as the CILC, but their scheduling of VFTs is different. VFTs through Streamable Learning are pre-scheduled for a certain date and time by the vendor. Once logged in through your schools SSO service, a teacher can schedule a live trip on their own by clicking on the desired VFT. As other districts can also join, interaction between the vendor and individual classrooms is limited to the chat, but still afford opportunities for students to have all of their questions answered! In addition, teachers can search and use any of the hundreds of pre-recorded VFTs at any time. Simply find the VFT desired, pre-screen to ensure it works for your purpose, and press play. With this option, you can play the VFT at any time or pause to add learning opportunities along the way! VFTs are an excellent resource to provide students with opportunities for learning they normally wouldn’t have access to. The Distance Learning team at CA BOCES is here to help you find the opportunities your are looking for to enhance your students education. Please don’t hesitate to reach out! We would love to help! By: Justin Shumaker, Senior Coordinator for Distance Learning This summer, teachers took advantage of two different opportunities to reflect on and learn more about what goes into skilled writing. Using two different texts: The Writing Revolution and The Writing Rope, participants dove into each book exploring the writing process and strategies that promote student writing. Before diving into the texts, participants explored two of the Science of Reading Literacy Briefs released by NYS in January 2024. In looking at the reading-writing relationship, participants reviewed Literacy Brief 3 and reflected how the reading-writing connection is evident in their classrooms. During the summer workshops both texts were utilized as valuable resources for supporting the reading-writing connection highlighted in Literacy Brief 3. The Writing Revolution strategies focus more on integrating writing into all content areas while emphasizing sentence-level writing as a foundation for more complex writing tasks. The Writing Rope offers more of a holistic view of writing, breaking down the key components that need to be woven together to create competent writers. The Writing Revolution (TWR) The Writing Revolution is a method developed by Judith C. Hochman that focuses on teaching writing skills across the curriculum. It emphasizes the integration of writing into content instruction rather than teaching writing in isolation. The six principles of TWR include:
The Writing Rope The Writing Rope is a metaphorical model created by Joan Sedita, which conceptualizes writing as a complex skill that can be broken down into five interrelated strands. Each strand represents a different component of writing that must be taught and developed simultaneously to produce skilled writers. The five strands include:
 This model is based on the idea that writing is a complex task that requires the integration of multiple skills and emphasizes that all strands must be woven together to produce skilled writers. When teaching, by focusing on each strand, educators provide direct explicit instruction on skilled writing to help students become more proficient and confident writers.
The Writing Rope text offers practical, hands-on activities to help educators learn how to teach these strands effectively, ensuring that each aspect of writing is developed in conjunction with the others. By: Jessica Schirrmacher-Smith, Senior Coordinator for Curriculum and Professional Development  Several high school Earth Science and Biology teachers spent the first two days of their summer in collaboration, learning about updates from the NYS Education Department in preparation for the full implementation of the NYS Science Learning Standards this coming school year. To capitalize on the beautiful summer days, the Collaborative Learning Community was a retreat style event at the CA BOCES Ellicottville Career and Technical Education Center's woodside lodge. The goal was to build a team of science teachers who feel comfortable leaning on and learning from each other as they implement the NYS Science Learning Standards. In addition to learning and discussing classroom ideas, participants did some team-building activities to build comfort and trust with each other. Teachers were introduced to various NYSED resources, including the Exam Educator Guide, which provides important information like test specifications, insight into the development of the exams, test design, and guidelines for administration. Earth Science teachers were excited to see the new Earth & Space Science Reference Tables, which include many of the data tables and charts from the older version, along with additional stimuli for students to practice scientific literacy skills by analyzing data and obtaining information. Teachers closely examined the NYSED released exam question samples (Biology or Earth Science), breaking them down to determine which standards are being tested and at which performance level they were written. This provided teachers with insight into how the test clusters are constructed and what the exams will look like in the spring of 2025. The teachers were most engaged in getting to know the new high school version of the Investigations. There will be three required NYS Investigations for Biology and three for Earth Science. These are interactive, inquiry-based, lab-style activities that should be conducted within the context of the related content and used as formative assessments towards the end of the lesson unit. Similar to the elementary and intermediate Investigations, teachers should administer these as they would any lab activity during science class. The investigations are set to take about 2 ½ to 3 hours and can be used to meet the 1200-minute lab requirement (as per the NYS Commissioner’s Regulations). Ideally, science classes should be run as labs almost exclusively, with students doing “lab” activities for at least 70% of the approximately 10,000 minutes of science class time.
For teachers who would like to try out an Investigation (Elementary, Intermediate, or High School), there will be workshops on August 22nd and November 12th. All resources that were explored during the Collaborative Learning Community are available at the NYSED Science Assessment Page. For Earth Science or Biology specific resources, use the lefthand menu. By: Kelli Grabowski, STEM Coordinator |
Our TeamStories come from school districts within the CA BOCES region and are authored by our Instructional Support Services Team. Archives
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